SparkNotes: As You Like It: Character List As You Like It Plot Overview Analysis of Major Characters Rosalind - The daughter of Duke Senior. Rosalind, considered one of Shakespeare’s most delightful heroines, is independent minded, strong-willed, good-hearted, and terribly clever. Rather than slink off into defeated exile, Rosalind resourcefully uses her trip to the Forest of Ardenne as an opportunity to take control of her own destiny. When she disguises herself as Ganymede—a handsome young man—and offers herself as a tutor in the ways of love to her beloved Orlando, Rosalind’s talents and charms are on full display. Only Rosalind, for instance, is both aware of the foolishness of romantic love and delighted to be in love. She teaches those around her to think, feel, and love better than they have previously, and she ensures that the courtiers returning from Ardenne are far gentler than those who fled to it. Read an in-depth analysis of Rosalind. Orlando - The youngest son of Sir Rowland de Bois and younger brother of Oliver.

Orlando is an attractive young man who, under his brother’s neglectful care, has languished without a gentleman’s education or training. Regardless, he considers himself to have great potential, and his victorious battle with Charles proves him right. Orlando cares for the aging Adam in the Forest of Ardenne and later risks his life to save Oliver from a hungry lioness, proving himself a proper gentleman. He is a fitting hero for the play and, though he proves no match for her wit or poetry, the most obvious romantic match for Rosalind. Read an in-depth analysis of Orlando. Duke Senior - The father of Rosalind and the rightful ruler of the dukedom in which the play is set. Having been banished by his usurping brother, Frederick, Duke Senior now lives in exile in the Forest of Ardenne with a number of loyal men, including Lord Amiens and Jaques. We have the sense that Senior did not put up much of a fight to keep his dukedom, for he seems to make the most of whatever life gives him.

Content in the forest, where he claims to learn as much from stones and brooks as he would in a church or library, Duke Senior proves himself to be a kind and fair-minded ruler. Jaques - A faithful lord who accompanies Duke Senior into exile in the Forest of Ardenne. Jaques is an example of a stock figure in Elizabethan comedy, the man possessed of a hopelessly melancholy disposition. Much like a referee in a football game, he stands on the sidelines, watching and judging the actions of the other characters without ever fully participating. Given his inability to participate in life, it is fitting that Jaques alone refuses to follow Duke Senior and the other courtiers back to court, and instead resolves to assume a solitary and contemplative life in a monastery. Read an in-depth analysis of Jaques. Celia - The daughter of Duke Frederick and Rosalind’s dearest friend. Celia’s devotion to Rosalind is unmatched, as evidenced by her decision to follow her cousin into exile. To make the trip, Celia assumes the disguise of a simple shepherdess and calls herself Aliena.

As elucidated by her extreme love of Rosalind and her immediate devotion to Oliver, whom she marries at the end of the play, Celia possesses a loving heart, but is prone to deep, almost excessive emotions. Duke Frederick - The brother of Duke Senior and usurper of his throne. Duke Frederick’s cruel nature and volatile temper are displayed when he banishes his niece, Rosalind, from court without reason. That Celia, his own daughter, cannot mitigate his unfounded anger demonstrates the intensity of the duke’s hatefulness. Frederick mounts an army against his exiled brother but aborts his vengeful mission after he meets an old religious man on the road to the Forest of Ardenne. He immediately changes his ways, dedicating himself to a monastic life and returning the crown to his brother, thus testifying to the ease and elegance with which humans can sometimes change for the better. Touchstone - A clown in Duke Frederick’s court who accompanies Rosalind and Celia in their flight to Ardenne.

Although Touchstone’s job, as fool, is to criticize the behavior and point out the folly of those around him, Touchstone fails to do so with even a fraction of Rosalind’s grace. Next to his mistress, the clown seems hopelessly vulgar and narrow-minded. Almost every line he speaks echoes with bawdy innuendo. Oliver - The oldest son of Sir Rowland de Bois and sole inheritor of the de Bois estate. Oliver is a loveless young man who begrudges his brother, Orlando, a gentleman’s education. He admits to hating Orlando without cause or reason and goes to great lengths to ensure his brother’s downfall. When Duke Frederick employs Oliver to find his missing brother, Oliver finds himself living in despair in the Forest of Ardenne, where Orlando saves his life. This display of undeserved generosity prompts Oliver to change himself into a better, more loving person. His transformation is evidenced by his love for the disguised Celia, whom he takes to be a simple shepherdess. Silvius - A young, suffering shepherd, who is desperately in love with the disdainful Phoebe.

Conforming to the model of Petrarchan love, Silvius prostrates himself before a woman who refuses to return his affections. In the end, however, he wins the object of his desire. Phoebe - A young shepherdess, who disdains the affections of Silvius. She falls in love with Ganymede, who is really Rosalind in disguise, but Rosalind tricks Phoebe into marrying Silvius. Lord Amiens - A faithful lord who accompanies Duke Senior into exile in the Forest of Ardenne. Lord Amiens is rather jolly and loves to sing. Charles - A professional wrestler in Duke Frederick’s court. Charles demonstrates both his caring nature and his political savvy when he asks Oliver to intercede in his upcoming fight with Orlando: he does not want to injure the young man and thereby lose favor among the nobles who support him. Charles’s concern for Orlando proves unwarranted when Orlando beats him senseless. Adam - The elderly former servant of Sir Rowland de Bois. Having witnessed Orlando’s hardships, Adam offers not only to accompany his young master into exile but to fund their journey with the whole of his modest life’s savings.

He is a model of loyalty and devoted service. Sir Rowland de Bois - The father of Oliver and Orlando, friend of Duke Senior, and enemy of Duke Frederick. Upon Sir Rowland’s death, the vast majority of his estate was handed over to Oliver according to the custom of primogeniture. Corin - A shepherd. Corin attempts to counsel his friend Silvius in the ways of love, but Silvius refuses to listen. Audrey - A simpleminded goatherd who agrees to marry Touchstone. William - A young country boy who is in love with Audrey. More Help Shakespeare's Plays: Common Questions about Shakespeare's Plays Shakespeare's Plays: General Questions I would like to know more about the categories Shakespeare's works fall into and why. Shakespeare's works fall into three main categories: the plays, the sonnets, and the poems. The plays are further divided into three (sometimes four) categories: the comedies, the histories, the tragedies, and the romances. I will give you some information on the subdivisions of the plays.

The Comedies Eighteen of Shakespeare's plays are usually among the comedies: Comedy of Errors, Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labours Lost, The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, Pericles, All's Well that End's Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida (sometimes classified as a tragedy), Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and The Two Noble Kinsmen (which many believe is not a work written totally by Shakespeare). The comedies have common elements: they involve lovers and they almost always have a happy ending. The Tragedies Ten plays are considered tragedies: Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens. All the tragedies have a hero (or protagonist) that must overcome external and internal obstacles. Often, the protagonist has a 'tragic flaw' that leads to his ultimate destruction.

A good example is Macbeth, whose evil ambition for the throne overtakes him and causes his downfall. The Histories Shakespeare wrote ten history plays: Parts 1, 2, and 3 of Henry VI, Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, Henry V, Richard II, Richard III, King John, and Henry VIII. He received most of his information and plot ideas from one book, Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The central theme of the history plays is the gain and loss of power, and, in particular, the theme of divine right. Shakespeare spends a lot of time discussing what makes a good, wise, and successful ruler in his history plays. The Romances Sometimes Shakespeare's late comedies are grouped together as romances. These are Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest, and (rarely, The Two Noble Kinsmen). These plays, at times, seem more like tragedies than comedies, but they have the standard 'happy ending'. Many believe that the romances are Shakespeare's best plays, and represent the poet at his most mature stage of writing. Have all of Shakespeare's plays been performed?

All of Shakespeare's canonical plays (those that are always included in his collected works) have been performed at some time. However, some of them, as far as we know, were not performed during Shakespeare's lifetime -- like King John. However, we must be careful because even though we have no record of a performance, it does not necessarily mean that there was no performance. Which plays are considered romances? Shakespeare's late comedies are considered romances -- The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, Cymbeline, and Pericles. The Two Noble Kinsman is also sometimes mentioned along side these other plays as a romantic comedy. Did Shakespeare perform in any of his own plays? We will never know for sure exactly how many roles Shakespeare played himself, although we do have some general information. First, we know that Shakespeare began his career on the stage by 1592, because there is a surviving document by Robert Greene -- there's more about him on my biography page ( Scholars believe that Shakespeare might have played the title role in Edward I (a play by Edward Peele) in 1593.

It is also assumed that Shakespeare played smaller roles in a variety of his own plays, including Macbeth (King Duncan), As You Like It (Adam), Henry IV (King Henry), and Hamlet (Hamlet's Father). Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare's first biographer, mentioned that Shakespeare's role as "the Ghost in his own Hamlet" was "the top of his performance". How many of Shakespeare's plays are set in Italy? The plays in which some or all of the action is set in Italy are: All's Well that Ends Well, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, Cymbeline, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Winter's Tale. Keep in mind that some of these plays are not set exclusively in Italy. What is the meaning of farce as defined in Shakespeare's plays? Farce is a form of comedy, with little or no purpose other than to prompt laughter from the audience. Physical humour (slapstick) and ridiculous situations are trademarks of a farce.

Shakespeare did not write any plays that would be classified as a farce, although The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew come close. The Taming of the Shrew has been performed several times as a farce, using the particular form of staging a farce -- commedia dell'arte. Define tragedy as it relates to Shakespeare's plays. Tragedy, as it relates to Shakespeare's plays, is a drama dealing with a central protagonist, or hero, who has to battle a specific problem or series of problems. Usually the hero overcomes these problems but the outcome is not positive. In almost all Shakespeare's great tragedies, a "tragic flaw" will prevent the hero from emerging completely victorious. What is the Shakespeare Apocrypha? The term apocrypha is given to the collection of 12 plays that some scholars believe to be Shakespeare's, but are not officially part of the current canon of works because no real proof of authenticity has ever been brought forth.

Here are the names of the 12 apocryphal plays: Locrine; The London Prodigal; The Puritan; Thomas, Lord Cromwell; Sir John Oldcastle; Arden of Feversham; A Yorkshire Tragedy; The Birth of Merlin; Edward III; Fair Em; Mucedorus; and The Merry Devil of Edmonton. _________ William Shakespeare - William Shakespeare Biography - Poem Hunter William Shakespeare - William Shakespeare Biography - Poem Hunter Videos Biography of William Shakespeare an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith.

Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others. Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were mainly comedies and histories, genres he raised to the peak of sophistication and artistry by the end of the 16th century. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime.

In 1623, two of his former theatrical colleagues published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. Life Early life William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden, the daughter of an affluent landowning farmer. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual birthdate remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April, St George's Day.

This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholar's mistake, has proved appealing to biographers, since Shakespeare died 23 April 1616. He was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. Although no attendance records for the period survive, most biographers agree that Shakespeare was probably educated at the King's New School in Stratford, a free school chartered in 1553, about a quarter-mile from his home. Grammar schools varied in quality during the Elizabethan era, but the curriculum was dictated by law throughout England, and the school would have provided an intensive education in Latin grammar and the classics. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway. The consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence 27 November 1582. The next day two of Hathaway's neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage.

The ceremony may have been arranged in some haste, since the Worcester chancellor allowed the marriage banns to be read once instead of the usual three times, and six months after the marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter, Susanna, baptised 26 May 1583. Twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596. After the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592, and scholars refer to the years between 1585 and 1592 as Shakespeare's "lost years". Biographers attempting to account for this period have reported many apocryphal stories. Nicholas Rowe, Shakespeare’s first biographer, recounted a Stratford legend that Shakespeare fled the town for London to escape prosecution for deer poaching in the estate of local squire Thomas Lucy. Shakespeare is also supposed to have taken his revenge on Lucy by writing a scurrilous ballad about him.

Another 18th-century story has Shakespeare starting his theatrical career minding the horses of theatre patrons in London. John Aubrey reported that Shakespeare had been a country schoolmaster. Some 20th-century scholars have suggested that Shakespeare may have been employed as a schoolmaster by Alexander Hoghton of Lancashire, a Catholic landowner who named a certain "William Shakeshafte" in his will. No evidence substantiates such stories other than hearsay collected after his death, and Shakeshafte was a common name in the Lancashire area. London and Theatrical Career It is not known exactly when Shakespeare began writing, but contemporary allusions and records of performances show that several of his plays were on the London stage by 1592. He was well enough known in London by then to be attacked in print by the playwright Robert Greene in his Groats-Worth of Wit: ...there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tiger's heart wrapped in a Player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

Scholars differ on the exact meaning of these words, but most agree that Greene is accusing Shakespeare of reaching above his rank in trying to match university-educated writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Nashe and Greene himself (the "university wits"). The italicised phrase parodying the line "Oh, tiger's heart wrapped in a woman's hide" from Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 3, along with the pun "Shake-scene", identifies Shakespeare as Greene's target. Here Johannes Factotum—"Jack of all trades"— means a second-rate tinkerer with the work of others, rather than the more common "universal genius". Greene's attack is the earliest surviving mention of Shakespeare’s career in the theatre. Biographers suggest that his career may have begun any time from the mid-1580s to just before Greene's remarks. From 1594, Shakespeare's plays were performed only by the Lord Chamberlain's Men, a company owned by a group of players, including Shakespeare, that soon became the leading playing company in London.

After the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, the company was awarded a royal patent by the new king, James I, and changed its name to the King's Men. In 1599, a partnership of company members built their own theatre on the south bank of the River Thames, which they called the Globe. In 1608, the partnership also took over the Blackfriars indoor theatre. Records of Shakespeare's property purchases and investments indicate that the company made him a wealthy man. In 1597, he bought the second-largest house in Stratford, New Place, and in 1605, he invested in a share of the parish tithes in Stratford. Some of Shakespeare's plays were published in quarto editions from 1594. By 1598, his name had become a selling point and began to appear on the title pages. Shakespeare continued to act in his own and other plays after his success as a playwright. The 1616 edition of Ben Jonson's Works names him on the cast lists for Every Man in His Humour (1598) and Sejanus His Fall (1603).

The absence of his name from the 1605 cast list for Jonson’s Volpone is taken by some scholars as a sign that his acting career was nearing its end. The First Folio of 1623, however, lists Shakespeare as one of "the Principal Actors in all these Plays", some of which were first staged after Volpone, although we cannot know for certain which roles he played. In 1610, John Davies of Hereford wrote that "good Will" played "kingly" roles. In 1709, Rowe passed down a tradition that Shakespeare played the ghost of Hamlet's father. Later traditions maintain that he also played Adam in As You Like It and the Chorus in Henry V, though scholars doubt the sources of the information. Shakespeare divided his time between London and Stratford during his career. In 1596, the year before he bought New Place as his family home in Stratford, Shakespeare was living in the parish of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, north of the River Thames. He moved across the river to Southwark by 1599, the year his company constructed the Globe Theatre there.

By 1604, he had moved north of the river again, to an area north of St Paul's Cathedral with many fine houses. There he rented rooms from a French Huguenot called Christopher Mountjoy, a maker of ladies' wigs and other headgear. Later Years and Death Rowe was the first biographer to pass down the tradition that Shakespeare retired to Stratford some years before his death; but retirement from all work was uncommon at that time; and Shakespeare continued to visit London. In 1612 he was called as a witness in a court case concerning the marriage settlement of Mountjoy's daughter, Mary. In March 1613 he bought a gatehouse in the former Blackfriars priory; and from November 1614 he was in London for several weeks with his son-in-law, John Hall. After 1606–1607, Shakespeare wrote fewer plays, and none are attributed to him after 1613. His last three plays were collaborations, probably with John Fletcher, who succeeded him as the house playwright for the King’s Men. Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and was survived by his wife and two daughters.

Susanna had married a physician, John Hall, in 1607, and Judith had married Thomas Quiney, a vintner, two months before Shakespeare’s death. In his will, Shakespeare left the bulk of his large estate to his elder daughter Susanna. The terms instructed that she pass it down intact to "the first son of her body". The Quineys had three children, all of whom died without marrying. The Halls had one child, Elizabeth, who married twice but died without children in 1670, ending Shakespeare’s direct line. Shakespeare's will scarcely mentions his wife, Anne, who was probably entitled to one third of his estate automatically. He did make a point, however, of leaving her "my second best bed", a bequest that has led to much speculation. Some scholars see the bequest as an insult to Anne, whereas others believe that the second-best bed would have been the matrimonial bed and therefore rich in significance. Shakespeare was buried in the chancel of the Holy Trinity Church two days after his death.

The epitaph carved into the stone slab covering his grave includes a curse against moving his bones, which was carefully avoided during restoration of the church in 2008: Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, To digg the dvst encloased heare. Bleste be ye man yt spares thes stones, And cvrst be he yt moves my bones. Modern spelling: "Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear," "To dig the dust enclosed here." "Blessed be the man that spares these stones," "And cursed be he who moves my bones." Sometime before 1623, a funerary monument was erected in his memory on the north wall, with a half-effigy of him in the act of writing. Its plaque compares him to Nestor, Socrates, and Virgil. In 1623, in conjunction with the publication of the First Folio, the Droeshout engraving was published. Shakespeare has been commemorated in many statues and memorials around the world, including funeral monuments in Southwark Cathedral and Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Plays Most playwrights of the period typically collaborated with others at some point, and critics agree that Shakespeare did the same, mostly early and late in his career. Some attributions, such as Titus Andronicus and the early history plays, remain controversial, while The Two Noble Kinsmen and the lost Cardenio have well-attested contemporary documentation. Textual evidence also supports the view that several of the plays were revised by other writers after their original composition. The first recorded works of Shakespeare are Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI, written in the early 1590s during a vogue for historical drama. Shakespeare's plays are difficult to date, however, and studies of the texts suggest that Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew and The Two Gentlemen of Verona may also belong to Shakespeare’s earliest period. His first histories, which draw heavily on the 1587 edition of Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, dramatise the destructive results of weak or corrupt rule and have been interpreted as a justification for the origins of the Tudor dynasty.

The early plays were influenced by the works of other Elizabethan dramatists, especially Thomas Kyd and Christopher Marlowe, by the traditions of medieval drama, and by the plays of Seneca. The Comedy of Errors was also based on classical models, but no source for The Taming of the Shrew has been found, though it is related to a separate play of the same name and may have derived from a folk story. Like The Two Gentlemen of Verona, in which two friends appear to approve of rape, the Shrew's story of the taming of a woman's independent spirit by a man sometimes troubles modern critics and directors. Shakespeare's early classical and Italianate comedies, containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest comedies. A Midsummer Night's Dream is a witty mixture of romance, fairy magic, and comic lowlife scenes. Shakespeare's next comedy, the equally romantic Merchant of Venice, contains a portrayal of the vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, which reflects Elizabethan views but may appear derogatory to modern audiences.

The wit and wordplay of Much Ado About Nothing, the charming rural setting of As You Like It, and the lively merrymaking of Twelfth Night complete Shakespeare's sequence of great comedies. After the lyrical Richard II, written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, Henry IV, parts 1 and 2, and Henry V. His characters become more complex and tender as he switches deftly between comic and serious scenes, prose and poetry, and achieves the narrative variety of his mature work. This period begins and ends with two tragedies: Romeo and Juliet, the famous romantic tragedy of sexually charged adolescence, love, and death; and Julius Caesar—based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives—which introduced a new kind of drama. According to Shakespearean scholar James Shapiro, in Julius Caesar "the various strands of politics, character, inwardness, contemporary events, even Shakespeare's own reflections on the act of writing, began to infuse each other".

In the early 17th century, Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays" Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, and All's Well That Ends Well and a number of his best known tragedies. Many critics believe that Shakespeare's greatest tragedies represent the peak of his art. The titular hero of one of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, Hamlet, has probably been discussed more than any other Shakespearean character, especially for his famous soliloquy "To be or not to be; that is the question". Unlike the introverted Hamlet, whose fatal flaw is hesitation, the heroes of the tragedies that followed, Othello and King Lear, are undone by hasty errors of judgement. The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In Othello, the villain Iago stokes Othello's sexual jealousy to the point where he murders the innocent wife who loves him. In King Lear, the old king commits the tragic error of giving up his powers, initiating the events which lead to the torture and blinding of the Earl of Gloucester and the murder of Lear's youngest daughter Cordelia.

According to the critic Frank Kermode, "the play offers neither its good characters nor its audience any relief from its cruelty". In Macbeth, the shortest and most compressed of Shakespeare's tragedies, uncontrollable ambition incites Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth, to murder the rightful king and usurp the throne, until their own guilt destroys them in turn. In this play, Shakespeare adds a supernatural element to the tragic structure. His last major tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus, contain some of Shakespeare's finest poetry and were considered his most successful tragedies by the poet and critic T. S. Eliot. In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale and The Tempest, as well as the collaboration, Pericles, Prince of Tyre. Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Some commentators have seen this change in mood as evidence of a more serene view of life on Shakespeare's part, but it may merely reflect the theatrical fashion of the day.

Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, probably with John Fletcher. Performances It is not clear for which companies Shakespeare wrote his early plays. The title page of the 1594 edition of Titus Andronicus reveals that the play had been acted by three different troupes. After the plagues of 1592–3, Shakespeare's plays were performed by his own company at The Theatre and the Curtain in Shoreditch, north of the Thames. Londoners flocked there to see the first part of Henry IV, Leonard Digges recording, "Let but Falstaff come, Hal, Poins, the rest...and you scarce shall have a room".] When the company found themselves in dispute with their landlord, they pulled The Theatre down and used the timbers to construct the Globe Theatre, the first playhouse built by actors for actors, on the south bank of the Thames at Southwark. The Globe opened in autumn 1599, with Julius Caesar one of the first plays staged. Most of Shakespeare's greatest post-1599 plays were written for the Globe, including Hamlet, Othello and King Lear.

After the Lord Chamberlain's Men were renamed the King's Men in 1603, they entered a special relationship with the new King James. Although the performance records are patchy, the King's Men performed seven of Shakespeare's plays at court between 1 November 1604 and 31 October 1605, including two performances of The Merchant of Venice. After 1608, they performed at the indoor Blackfriars Theatre during the winter and the Globe during the summer. The indoor setting, combined with the Jacobean fashion for lavishly staged masques, allowed Shakespeare to introduce more elaborate stage devices. In Cymbeline, for example, Jupiter descends "in thunder and lightning, sitting upon an eagle: he throws a thunderbolt. The ghosts fall on their knees." The actors in Shakespeare's company included the famous Richard Burbage, William Kempe, Henry Condell and John Heminges. Burbage played the leading role in the first performances of many of Shakespeare's plays, including Richard III, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear. The popular comic actor Will Kempe played the servant Peter in Romeo and Juliet and Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, among other characters.

He was replaced around the turn of the 16th century by Robert Armin, who played roles such as Touchstone in As You Like It and the fool in King Lear. In 1613, Sir Henry Wotton recorded that Henry VIII "was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of pomp and ceremony". On 29 June, however, a cannon set fire to the thatch of the Globe and burned the theatre to the ground, an event which pinpoints the date of a Shakespeare play with rare precision. Textual Sources In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare's friends from the King's Men, published the First Folio, a collected edition of Shakespeare's plays. It contained 36 texts, including 18 printed for the first time. Many of the plays had already appeared in quarto versions—flimsy books made from sheets of paper folded twice to make four leaves. No evidence suggests that Shakespeare approved these editions, which the First Folio describes as "stol'n and surreptitious copies".

Alfred Pollard termed some of them "bad quartos" because of their adapted, paraphrased or garbled texts, which may in places have been reconstructed from memory. Where several versions of a play survive, each differs from the other. The differences may stem from copying or printing errors, from notes by actors or audience members, or from Shakespeare's own papers. In some cases, for example Hamlet, Troilus and Cressida and Othello, Shakespeare could have revised the texts between the quarto and folio editions. In the case of King Lear, however, while most modern additions do conflate them, the 1623 folio version is so different from the 1608 quarto, that the Oxford Shakespeare prints them both, arguing that they cannot be conflated without confusion. Poems In 1593 and 1594, when the theatres were closed because of plague, Shakespeare published two narrative poems on erotic themes, Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece. He dedicated them to Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton.

In Venus and Adonis, an innocent Adonis rejects the sexual advances of Venus; while in The Rape of Lucrece, the virtuous wife Lucrece is raped by the lustful Tarquin. Influenced by Ovid's Metamorphoses, the poems show the guilt and moral confusion that result from uncontrolled lust. Both proved popular and were often reprinted during Shakespeare's lifetime. A third narrative poem, A Lover's Complaint, in which a young woman laments her seduction by a persuasive suitor, was printed in the first edition of the Sonnets in 1609. Most scholars now accept that Shakespeare wrote A Lover's Complaint. Critics consider that its fine qualities are marred by leaden effects. The Phoenix and the Turtle, printed in Robert Chester's 1601 Love's Martyr, mourns the deaths of the legendary phoenix and his lover, the faithful turtle dove. In 1599, two early drafts of sonnets 138 and 144 appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim, published under Shakespeare's name but without his permission.

Sonnets Published in 1609, the Sonnets were the last of Shakespeare's non-dramatic works to be printed. Scholars are not certain when each of the 154 sonnets was composed, but evidence suggests that Shakespeare wrote sonnets throughout his career for a private readership. Even before the two unauthorised sonnets appeared in The Passionate Pilgrim in 1599, Francis Meres had referred in 1598 to Shakespeare's "sugred Sonnets among his private friends". Few analysts believe that the published collection follows Shakespeare's intended sequence. He seems to have planned two contrasting series: one about uncontrollable lust for a married woman of dark complexion (the "dark lady"), and one about conflicted love for a fair young man (the "fair youth"). It remains unclear if these figures represent real individuals, or if the authorial "I" who addresses them represents Shakespeare himself, though Wordsworth believed that with the sonnets "Shakespeare unlocked his heart". The 1609 edition was dedicated to a "Mr. W.H.", credited as "the only begetter" of the poems.

It is not known whether this was written by Shakespeare himself or by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, whose initials appear at the foot of the dedication page; nor is it known who Mr. W.H. was, despite numerous theories, or whether Shakespeare even authorised the publication. Critics praise the Sonnets as a profound meditation on the nature of love, sexual passion, procreation, death, and time. Style Shakespeare's first plays were written in the conventional style of the day. He wrote them in a stylised language that does not always spring naturally from the needs of the characters or the drama. The poetry depends on extended, sometimes elaborate metaphors and conceits, and the language is often rhetorical—written for actors to declaim rather than speak. The grand speeches in Titus Andronicus, in the view of some critics, often hold up the action, for example; and the verse in The Two Gentlemen of Verona has been described as stilted. Soon, however, Shakespeare began to adapt the traditional styles to his own purposes. The opening soliloquy of Richard III has its roots in the self-declaration of Vice in medieval drama.

At the same time, Richard’s vivid self-awareness looks forward to the soliloquies of Shakespeare's mature plays. No single play marks a change from the traditional to the freer style. Shakespeare combined the two throughout his career, with Romeo and Juliet perhaps the best example of the mixing of the styles. By the time of Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in the mid-1590s, Shakespeare had begun to write a more natural poetry. He increasingly tuned his metaphors and images to the needs of the drama itself. Shakespeare's standard poetic form was blank verse, composed in iambic pentameter. In practice, this meant that his verse was usually unrhymed and consisted of ten syllables to a line, spoken with a stress on every second syllable. The blank verse of his early plays is quite different from that of his later ones. It is often beautiful, but its sentences tend to start, pause, and finish at the end of lines, with the risk of monotony. Once Shakespeare mastered traditional blank verse, he began to interrupt and vary its flow. This technique releases the new power and flexibility of the poetry in plays such as Julius Caesar and Hamlet.

Shakespeare uses it, for example, to convey the turmoil in Hamlet's mind: Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting That would not let me sleep. Methought I lay Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly— And prais'd be rashness for it—let us know Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well... Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 2, 4–8 After Hamlet, Shakespeare varied his poetic style further, particularly in the more emotional passages of the late tragedies. The literary critic A. C. Bradley described this style as "more concentrated, rapid, varied, and, in construction, less regular, not seldom twisted or elliptical". In the last phase of his career, Shakespeare adopted many techniques to achieve these effects. These included run-on lines, irregular pauses and stops, and extreme variations in sentence structure and length.

In Macbeth, for example, the language darts from one unrelated metaphor or simile to another: "was the hope drunk/ Wherein you dressed yourself?" (1.7.35–38); "...pity, like a naked new-born babe/ Striding the blast, or heaven's cherubim, hors'd/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air..." (1.7.21–25). The listener is challenged to complete the sense. The late romances, with their shifts in time and surprising turns of plot, inspired a last poetic style in which long and short sentences are set against one another, clauses are piled up, subject and object are reversed, and words are omitted, creating an effect of spontaneity. Shakespeare combined poetic genius with a practical sense of the theatre. Like all playwrights of the time, he dramatised stories from sources such as Plutarch and Holinshed. He reshaped each plot to create several centres of interest and to show as many sides of a narrative to the audience as possible. This strength of design ensures that a Shakespeare play can survive translation, cutting and wide interpretation without loss to its core drama.

As Shakespeare’s mastery grew, he gave his characters clearer and more varied motivations and distinctive patterns of speech. He preserved aspects of his earlier style in the later plays, however. In Shakespeare's late romances, he deliberately returned to a more artificial style, which emphasised the illusion of theatre. Influence Shakespeare's work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore characters' minds. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success. Critic George Steiner described all English verse dramas from Coleridge to Tennyson as "feeble variations on Shakespearean themes." Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville's soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear.

Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare's works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The Swiss Romantic artist Henry Fuseli, a friend of William Blake, even translated Macbeth into German. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature. In Shakespeare's day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English. Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type. Expressions such as "with bated breath" (Merchant of Venice) and "a foregone conclusion" (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech. Critical Reputation Shakespeare was not revered in his lifetime, but he received his share of praise.

In 1598, the cleric and author Francis Meres singled him out from a group of English writers as "the most excellent" in both comedy and tragedy. And the authors of the Parnassus plays at St John's College, Cambridge, numbered him with Chaucer, Gower and Spenser. In the First Folio, Ben Jonson called Shakespeare the "Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the wonder of our stage", though he had remarked elsewhere that "Shakespeare wanted art". Between the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the end of the 17th century, classical ideas were in vogue. As a result, critics of the time mostly rated Shakespeare below John Fletcher and Ben Jonson. Thomas Rymer, for example, condemned Shakespeare for mixing the comic with the tragic. Nevertheless, poet and critic John Dryden rated Shakespeare highly, saying of Jonson, "I admire him, but I love Shakespeare". For several decades, Rymer's view held sway; but during the 18th century, critics began to respond to Shakespeare on his own terms and acclaim what they termed his natural genius.

A series of scholarly editions of his work, notably those of Samuel Johnson in 1765 and Edmond Malone in 1790, added to his growing reputation. By 1800, he was firmly enshrined as the national poet. In the 18th and 19th centuries, his reputation also spread abroad. Among those who championed him were the writers Voltaire, Goethe, Stendhal and Victor Hugo. During the Romantic era, Shakespeare was praised by the poet and literary philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge; and the critic August Wilhelm Schlegel translated his plays in the spirit of German Romanticism. In the 19th century, critical admiration for Shakespeare's genius often bordered on adulation. "That King Shakespeare," the essayist Thomas Carlyle wrote in 1840, "does not he shine, in crowned sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest of rallying signs; indestructible". The Victorians produced his plays as lavish spectacles on a grand scale. The playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw mocked the cult of Shakespeare worship as "bardolatry".

He claimed that the new naturalism of Ibsen's plays had made Shakespeare obsolete. The modernist revolution in the arts during the early 20th century, far from discarding Shakespeare, eagerly enlisted his work in the service of the avant-garde. The Expressionists in Germany and the Futurists in Moscow mounted productions of his plays. Marxist playwright and director Bertolt Brecht devised an epic theatre under the influence of Shakespeare. The poet and critic T. S. Eliot argued against Shaw that Shakespeare's "primitiveness" in fact made him truly modern. Eliot, along with G. Wilson Knight and the school of New Criticism, led a movement towards a closer reading of Shakespeare's imagery. In the 1950s, a wave of new critical approaches replaced modernism and paved the way for "post-modern" studies of Shakespeare. By the eighties, Shakespeare studies were open to movements such as structuralism, feminism, New Historicism, African American studies, and queer studies. Speculation about Shakespeare Authorship Main article: Shakespeare authorship question Around 150 years after Shakespeare's death, doubts began to be expressed about the authorship of the works attributed to him.

Proposed alternative candidates include Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, and Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. Several "group theories" have also been proposed. Only a small minority of academics believe there is reason to question the traditional attribution, but interest in the subject, particularly the Oxfordian theory of Shakespeare authorship, continues into the 21st century. Religion Some scholars claim that members of Shakespeare's family were Catholics, at a time when Catholic practice was against the law. Shakespeare's mother, Mary Arden, certainly came from a pious Catholic family. The strongest evidence might be a Catholic statement of faith signed by John Shakespeare, found in 1757 in the rafters of his former house in Henley Street. The document is now lost, however, and scholars differ as to its authenticity. In 1591 the authorities reported that John Shakespeare had missed church "for fear of process for debt", a common Catholic excuse. In 1606 the name of William's daughter Susanna appears on a list of those who failed to attend Easter communion in Stratford. Scholars find evidence both for and against Shakespeare's Catholicism in his plays, but the truth may be impossible to prove either way.

Sexuality Few details of Shakespeare's sexuality are known. At 18, he married the 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant. Susanna, the first of their three children, was born six months later on 26 May 1583. Over the centuries some readers have posited that Shakespeare's sonnets are autobiographical, and point to them as evidence of his love for a young man. Others read the same passages as the expression of intense friendship rather than sexual love. The 26 so-called "Dark Lady" sonnets, addressed to a married woman, are taken as evidence of heterosexual liaisons. Portraiture There is no written description of Shakespeare's physical appearance and no evidence that he ever commissioned a portrait, so the Droeshout engraving, which Ben Jonson approved of as a good likeness, and his Stratford monument provide the best evidence of his appearance. From the 18th century, the desire for authentic Shakespeare portraits fuelled claims that various surviving pictures depicted Shakespeare. That demand also led to the production of several fake portraits, as well as misattributions, repaintings and relabelling of portraits of other people.

William Shakespeare's Works: List of Works Classification of The Plays Shakespeare's works include the 36 plays printed in the First Folio of 1623, listed below according to their folio classification as comedies, histories and tragedies. Two plays not included in the First Folio, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre, are now accepted as part of the canon, with scholars agreed that Shakespeare made a major contribution to their composition. No Shakespearean poems were included in the First Folio. In the late 19th century, Edward Dowden classified four of the late comedies as romances, and though many scholars prefer to call them tragicomedies, his term is often used. These plays and the associated Two Noble Kinsmen are marked with an asterisk (*) below. In 1896, Frederick S. Boas coined the term "problem plays" to describe four plays: All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida and Hamlet. "Dramas as singular in theme and temper cannot be strictly called comedies or tragedies", he wrote.

"We may therefore borrow a convenient phrase from the theatre of today and class them together as Shakespeare's problem plays." The term, much debated and sometimes applied to other plays, remains in use, though Hamlet is definitively classed as a tragedy. The other problem plays are marked below with a double dagger. Plays thought to be only partly written by Shakespeare are marked with a dagger below. Other works occasionally attributed to him are listed as apocrypha. Comedies All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It William Shakespeare WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Born, Stratford-on-Avon, 1564 Died, Stratford, 1616 The following biography was originally published in The Outlines of Literature: English and American. Truman J. Backus. New York: Sheldon and Company, 1897. pp. 90-102. Purchase Plays by William Shakespeare The authentic biography of the most famous writer in English literature is brief. The following facts can be positively stated about William Shakespeare: John and Mary Arden Shakespeare were his parents.

He was born in the little town of Stratford-on-Avon, in Warwickshire, England, probably on the 23rd day of April, 1564. He married when eighteen years old. Three years after his marriage he went from Stratford to London. He was an actor, and one of the proprietors of the Globe Theater, in 1589. Ben Jonson was his intimate acquaintance. His last years were spent in his native place, where he was one of the influential citizens. He was once a plaintiff in a suit-at-law. He died on the 23rd day of April, 1616. Tradition says that he was a man of fine form and features, that he was sometimes too convivial, that he was beloved by nearly all who knew him, that he had the personal acquaintance of Elizabeth and James I. His father, John Shakespeare, probably a glover, had married Mary Arden, whose family had figured in the courtly and warlike annals of preceding reigns. John Shakespeare had long been one of the aldermen of Stratford, and had served in the office of bailiff or mayor in 1569.

Mary Arden had brought her husband a small property. That William Shakespeare could have derived even the most elementary knowledge of books from his parents seems impossible; for neither of them could write -- that accomplishment being comparatively rare in Elizabeth's reign. But there was at that time ... in the borough of Stratford, an endowed "free grammar school"; and it is not probable that John Shakespeare, alderman and past bailiff as he was, should have neglected the opportunity for educating his son. This opportunity, together with the varied though irregular reading, of which his works give evidence, and the vague tradition that he had been "in his youth a schoolmaster in the country," make it probable that the poet had more training than some of his admirers would give him credit for. A familiar legend tells of deer-poaching in company with riotous young fellows, in Sir Thomas Lucy's park at Charlcote, near Stratford. According to the story, Shakespeare was seized, brought before the indignant justice of the peace, and flogged. For this indignity he revenged himself by writing a satiric ballad and attaching it to the gates of Charlcote. Then the wrath of the knight blazed so high that Shakespeare sought refuge in London.

Although the story may have a foundation of truth, Shakespeare's departure from Stratford and his entrance into theatrical life in London may be explained in a different and less improbable manner. He was then twenty-two years of age. He had been married three years to Anne Hathaway, a young woman seven years his senior. His three children had been born. It was necessary to provide means for the support of his family, and that, too, without delay. HIS CAREER AS A DRAMATIST London was the resort for such an adventurer as he in search of fortune; and the theatrical profession, with its ready reward for the successful actor, was the most advantageous calling for him. When Shakespeare arrived in London, he naturally entered the service of one of the dramatic companies. Like other young men of that time, he made himself useful both as an actor and as a re-writer of plays. His early professional career was marked by industry and success, and by the prudence with which he accumulated wealth. By adapting old plays to the demands of his theater he acquired masterly knowledge of stage effect, and discovered the genius which enabled him to write the greatest dramas in the literature of the world.

His theatrical career continued from 1586 until 1611, a period of twenty-five years. Shakespeare quickly rose to such importance in his profession as to provoke the attacks of disappointed rivals. In 1592, Robert Greene makes bitter allusion to his name, accuses him of plagiarism, and plainly shows that envy dictated the attack. The scurrilous pamphlet containing this accusation was published after Greene's death, and evidently provoked criticism by its meanness. Chettle, its editor, promptly published an apology, in which he says of Shakespeare, -- "I am as sorry as if the originall fault had beene my fault, because myself have seene his demeanor no less civill than he exclent in the quality he professes: besides, divers of worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing which argues his honesty, and his facetious [felicitous] grace in writing that approoves his art." That Shakespeare was thoroughly acquainted with his art is clear from the inimitable "directions to the players" put into the mouth of Hamlet.

There are traditions that tell of his acting the Ghost in his tragedy of Hamlet , the graceful and touching character of Adam, the faithful old servant, in his As You Like It, the deeply pathetic impersonation of grief and despair in the popular tragedy of Hieronymo, and the sensible citizen, Old Knowell, in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humor. John Davies, in The Scourge of Folly, ascribes to him some excellence in the performance of kingly characters. But the first masterly actor of great tragic characters, as Richard III, Hamlet, and Othello , was Shakespeare's comrade, Richard Burbage . Six years after his arrival in London, Shakespeare had won his way to the foremost rank of literary men. Riches were flowing into his hands. The young Earl of Southampton is said to have expressed admiration for his worth and genius by making him the princely gift of a thousand pounds. Through succeeding years his prosperity continued. In 1597, at the age of thirty three, he purchased "New Place," the finest house in Stratford, making it a home for his family, and a refuge for his parents.

At about this time, he solicited a coat of arms for his father. His own defamed profession would have been an obstacle in the way of his securing the honor; but he succeeded in obtaining it for his father, and so gained it for himself by inheritance. He was the last to bear the family title; for his only son, Hamnet, died when eleven years of age. In 1602 he purchased one hundred and seven acres of land, and three years after, he invested four hundred and forty pounds in the tithes of Stratford. In 1611 he sold his interest in the Globe Theater, left London, and withdrew to the quietude of his home. There five years were spent in leisure that must have been a strange contrast to the thronging cares that had attended his busy professional life. An active interest in the welfare of his town, an occasional visit to London, generous entertainment of his friends, and the composition of one or two of his greatest dramas, seem to have occupied these years of retirement.

He died on the 23rd of April, 1616, the anniversary of his birthday, having just completed his fifty-second year; and was buried in the parish church of Stratford. In the wall, above his grave, a monument is erected containing his bust. This bust and the coarse engraving by Droeshout, prefixed to the first folio edition of his works published in 1623, are the most trustworthy of his portraits. In eulogistic verses Ben Jonson vouches for the faithfulness of Droeshout's picture. Few relics of Shakespeare remain. The house of New Place has long since been destroyed; but the garden in which it stood, and, in another street, the house where the poet was born, are preserved. His will, made a month before his death, testifies to his kind and affectionate disposition. To each of his old comrades and "fellows" he leaves some token of regard, generally "twenty-six shillings and eight pence apiece, to buy them rings." The three autographs attached to this document, and one or two more, are the only specimens of his writing that have been preserved.

EARLY NON-DRAMATIC POEMS Shakespeare's first original poems were not dramatic. He was the creator of a peculiar species of narrative composition, which achieved an immediate popularity. Venus and Adonis, a beautiful but sensuous and pagan poem, "the first heir of his invention," was published in 1593. It was reissued in five several editions between the years 1593 and 1602; while the Rape of Lucrece, which so extols the virtue of the heroine as to seem a foil to the first poem, during nearly the same time appeared in three editions. CLASSIFICATION OF HIS PLAYS There are internal evidences distinguishing Shakespeare's earlier from his later plays; but to obtain an accurate chronological list many acute investigators have exercised there ingenuity, with startling discrepancies in results. No reliance can be placed upon the order of the plays given in the first edition -- the folio published in 1623 by Heminge and Condell, Shakespeare's fellow-actors. For present purposes, the most useful classification is based upon the sources from which Shakespeare drew the materials for his dramas. The historical plays depict events of various English reigns.

Holinshed's Chronicles furnished much material for them, beginning with King John, and ending with Henry VIII. They are grand panoramas of national glory or national distress. Richard II, Richard III, the two dramas on the reign of Henry IV, and that chant of patriotic triumph, Henry V, illustrate the dramatist's power in representing epochs in the history of his nation. Shakespeare, though not an inventor, was the most prolific author, of such historical dramas. In addition to the plays founded on historic facts, he wrote many of a semi-historical character, drawing their stories from legends of various countries. Thus, Hamlet was taken from a Danish chronicle; Macbeth , Lear , and Cymbeline refer to more or less fabulous legends of Scottish and British history; while Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra are derived from ancient Roman annals. Nineteen dramas are based upon fiction. Of these a large majority can be traced to the Italian novelists and their imitators, who supplied the light literature of the sixteenth century. The short tales of those writers were singularly adapted to furnish an appropriate groundwork for the poet's delineations of humor or pathos.

Many of these plays were based upon preceding dramatic works. A few of the more ancient dramas are themselves preserved, exhibiting different degrees of imperfection and barbarism. In one or two cases we have more than one edition of the same play in its progress towards perfection under the hands of Shakespeare. Hamlet is the most notable instance. Some of these thirty-seven plays show marks of an inferior hand. The three parts of Henry VI were in all probability older dramas, retouched here and there with Shakespeare's inimitable strokes of nature and poetic fancy. So, too, the last of the English historical plays, Henry VIII, bears distinct traces of having been in part composed by another author. HIS COMPREHENSION OF NATURE On reading Shakespeare's historical dramas, the first impression is of his amazing apprehension and ready delineation of the peculiarities of the age and country respected. He gave reality to every character. From the most prominent down to the most obscure, each has a distinct individuality, true at the same time to that individuality, to his nation, and to the universal man. Even the influence of climate is not forgotten in his creations.

Note the characters of Ophelia and Juliet as types of the woman of the North and the woman of the South. Both are in love. As you read through the pages in which Ophelia lives, you find yourself communing with a woman whose sincerity and constancy and depth of soul, you recognize and admire. Her few words are very quietly spoken. When she discovers that her love is reciprocated, though she is chary of expression, you detect her delight. Then her trials come. Her lover is separated from her. Her cruel fortune is patiently borne until her reason is dethroned. Even in her insanity, her nature is true to its clime. Still there is reserve. Her grief finds little utterance in words, but sings itself to rest in snatches of song. Her emotional nature is under control. Her anxiety, her joy, her grief, are alike subdued by the reserve that is natural to the Northern temperament. Juliet stands in striking contrast. No calm exterior hides her impulsive spirit. Her love comes suddenly to its full expression. Her womanliness appears in emotions that are profound, though easily moved; in a constancy of love, though that love would seem to expend itself in demonstration.

Her womanliness is as pure as Ophelia's. She is simply true to the impulsive nature of the Southerner. HIS DELINEATION OF CHARACTER Shakespeare's delineation of passion is unique. Others fall more or less into the error of making their personages mere embodiments of moral qualities -- of ambition, of avarice, of hypocrisy. Shakespeare never forgets the infinite complexity of human nature. As Macaulay justly observes, the primary characteristic of Shylock is revengefulness; but a closer insight discloses a thousand other qualities, whose mutual play and varying intensity go to compose the complex being that Shakespeare has drawn. Othello is no mere impersonation of jealousy, nor Macbeth of ambition, nor Falstaff of selfish gayety, nor Timon of misanthropy, nor Imogen of wifely love: in each of these personages, the more closely we analyze, the deeper and more multiform will appear the springs of action. To this wonderful power of conceiving complex character may be attributed another distinguishing peculiarity of this poet; namely, the total absence from his works of any tendency to egotism. From his dramas we learn nothing whatever of his own sympathies and tendencies.

He is all persons in turn. When he has once thrown off such a character as Othello, he never recurs to it. Othello disappears from the stage as completely as a real Othello would disappear from the world. Shakespeare has given us other pictures of jealous men -- Leontes, Ford, Posthumus; but how variously is their passion manifested! In the characters of women, too, what a range, what inexhaustible variety! In no class of his impersonations are the depth, delicacy, and the extent of Shakespeare's creative power more visible than in his women. This is the more remarkable when we remember that in drawing these varied types of character, he knew that they would be acted by boys or young men -- English women not appearing on the stage until long after Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, Rosalind, and Juliet had been created.

The author must have felt what he so powerfully expressed in the language of his own Cleopatra: "The quick comedians Extemporary shall stage us: Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness." HIS PLOTS BORROWED In no instance has Shakespeare taken the trouble of inventing a plot for himself. Appropriating without hesitation materials already prepared, he directed his energies to the portrayal of human nature and human passion. He fused old material and brought forth a new product. We are not to infer that the poet necessarily consulted the tales and dramas in the original tongues. A careful examination of his works seems to prove that he rarely made use of any ancient or foreign literature not then existing in English translations; a fact which lends some corroboration to the well-known statement by Ben Jonson that Shakespeare had "small Latin and less Greek." HIS METAPHORICAL STYLE Shakespeare's style is criticised for its obscurity. The profundity of his thinking and the reach of his imagination make him subject to that criticism. He often thinks in metaphors; and we have to discern the figure clearly, before we can apprehend his thought.

The same quality of style will be noticed in Bacon; he, too, does his severest thinking in boldest metaphors. This habit is characteristic of the poetic mind. It is simply the power of condensing much thought into brief expression. Because he has that power preëminently, Shakespeare is quoted more frequently than any other English writer. HIS INFLUENCE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR LANGUAGE To him, more than to any other since Chaucer, the English language is indebted. The familiar version of the Bible, made in 1611, and the writings of Shakespeare, have been the conservators of English speech. The general reading of two books that are models of simplicity, of sincerity in expression, and of discrimination in words, has given to the millions of the English-speaking race a rich and fixed vocabulary. Shakespeare wrote three centuries ago, yet we read him today to find that, while he made the language of his predecessors obsolete, his vocabulary has withstood the assaults of time and is still fresh and vigorous. Fifteen of Shakespeare's plays were printed during his lifetime, probably without his sanction.

He was careless of the fate of his works, leaving them to the mercy of the dramatic companies that owned them and to speculating publishers. The first edition of his plays, a folio edited by his former comrades, Heminge and Condell, appeared in 1623. A second edition followed in 1632, and a third in 1663. Another folio in 1685 supplied the demands of his English readers, until Nicholas Rowe published the first critical edition in 1709. HIS SONNETS The sonnets of Shakespeare possess a peculiar interest, not only from their intrinsic beauty, but also from the fact that they contain allusions to the personal feelings of their author -- allusions pointing to some deep disappointment. They were first printed in 1609, though, from references found in contemporary writings, it is clear that many of them had been composed previously. They are one hundred and fifty-four in number. Some of them are evidently addressed to a man, while others are as plainly intended for a woman. Through all of them there flows a current of sadness, discontent, and wounded affection.

Had his dramatic works been unwritten, these sonnets, together with his early amatory poems, would have given him rank among the most brilliant poets of his age; but the superior glory of his dramas overshadows the minor works. Shakespeare displays such stores of knowledge, such powers of discrimination, such resources of wit, such pathos, such exhaustlessness of language, such scope of imagination, as can be found in no other English poet. Moreover, he seems to have been a symmetrical man. The fact that, working in a defamed profession, he commanded respect; the fact that, being the most eminent of poets, he was at the same time successful in practical affairs; and the fact that, out of the resources of his mind, he has drawn every phase of humanity, indicate his own completeness and balance of character.

Question: The character of Adam the servant was said to have been played by Shakespeare in which of his plays?
Answer: As You Like It